Choral music

James G. Smith, Thomas Brawley and N. Lee Orr

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2218820
Published in print: 26 November 2013
Published online: 06 February 2012

Music written for a group of singers, which is generally known as a chorus or choir. They may perform
either in unison or, more commonly, in parts with one or more singers to a part. This article deals with
the history and repertory of American choral music of the Western tradition. For further discussion of
different genres of choral music see Anthem, Fuging-tune, Glee, Gospel music, Hymnody, Partsong,
Psalmody, Shape-note hymnody, Singing-school, Spiritual, and Vocal jazz ensemble. Other genres that
use choral forces but are not customarily referred to as “choral” include Cantata, Collegiate a cappella,
Ode, Opera, certain types of Popular music, and Work songs. Information on the musical practices of
religious denominations, some of which call for choral music, are to be found within general articles
(for example, see Jewish music). The vocal music of Native Americans is discussed in articles on the
individual tribal groups (see also Native american music), and that of the various immigrant ethnic
groups in Asian American music and European American music; the choral music of African Americans
is discussed in African American music. A number of individual choirs are dealt with in their own
entries, in articles on their conductors, or in articles concerning the cities in which they are based (see
also Choral society). Several choral groups devoted specifically to the performance of music of the
Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical periods have flourished as a result of the Early-music revival.
Choral music in schools and universities is discussed in the article on Music education. For information
on choral music festivals see Festivals.

I. History of choral singing.

1. 17th and 18th centuries.

American choral music began with the congregational psalmody practiced by the early settlers in New
England. Using psalters brought from Europe and, later, American revisions and editions, they sang
metrical, rhymed translations of the psalms, without accompaniment and generally in unison. In the
absence of trained musical leaders, congregations customarily had a very small repertory of tunes,
which they learned by rote. A leader read or sang each line of the psalm or hymn before the
congregation sang it (see Lining out). The singing style was characterized by extremely slow tempos,
independent individual lines, loud volume, little regularity of rhythm, and improvised, heterophonic
melodic ornamentation.

Early in the 18th century, Congregationalist worshippers and some New England clergymen decided
that this style of congregational singing was unacceptable; they proposed a reform movement intended
to improve the quality of congregational singing. Around 1720, a controversy arose between those who
preferred the “Old way of singing” and reformers who favored what they called “Regular Singing,”
“Singing by Rule,” or “Singing by Note.” The disputants argued primarily on theological grounds, but
the outcome was of decided musical importance. The advocates of “Regular Singing” prevailed and in
the pursuit of the desired reforms singing-schools were established beginning in the late 1720s.

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Most New England singing-schools were led by itinerant singing masters, who were generally hired by
local parishes, of whom William Billings was the foremost representative. A typical school consisted of
about 50 students and lasted between one and three months; schools were held in churches, meeting
houses, or occasionally in taverns. Students were taught to read music (using solmization as a tool)
and to sing in parts; attention was also given to vocal production, style of performance, and
deportment. At the conclusion of a singing-school it was common to present a public demonstration.
The singing, like the music, has been described as robust.

By the mid-1700s the singers began requesting the right to sit together during the services and even to
perform tunes or an anthem on their own. This establishment of an independent group of singers
resulted in the formation of church and community choirs throughout New England. The Stoughton
(Massachusetts) Musical Society, the oldest enduring community choral organization in the United
States, was founded in 1786 under the influence of the singing-school movement. Other Massachusetts
towns soon joined them. Newburyport formed one in 1774 (the Musical Society), Boston in 1782 (the
Aretinian Society), and Harvard College in 1789 (the Singing Club). In 1784 Andrew Adgate proposed a
plan to found what he called an Institution for the Encouragement of Church Music in Philadelphia.
The result of his efforts was The Uranian Academy (1787), which provided free music instruction to
large numbers of students and presented public concerts of sacred music. In 1786 Adgate led a chorus
of 230 and an orchestra of 50 in a varied selection of sacred works including the “Hallelujah Chorus”
from Handel’s Messiah and Billings’s I am the rose of Sharon. The Uranian Academy’s concerts, and
similar choral concerts presented by William Tuckey in New York and by William Selby in Boston, were
exceptional events at a time when public concerts consisted predominantly of instrumental music.

There were also active choral traditions in certain minority religious sects, although most were isolated
and made little lasting impact. Ann Lee, the founder of the American Shakers, communicated to her
followers several songs in unorthodox notation which had been revealed to her in visions (see Shakers).
Conrad Beissel, the leader of a Pennsylvania sect known as the Ephrata cloister or the Community of
the Solitary, organized choirs and singing-schools for his followers and produced an unconventional
Dissertation on Harmony and two voluminous collections of hymns. In contrast to the idiosyncratic
activities of the Shaker and Ephrata Cloister communities, the Moravian Church, officially known as
the Unitas Fratrum, encouraged the production of a large body of remarkably sophisticated choral
(and instrumental) music that compares favorably with Classical European compositions (see Moravian
church). The Moravians excelled in performance as well as in composition; in Bethlehem, a Collegium
musicum was formed in 1744, and in Salem, the Collegium Musicum der Gemeine was established in
1786. In addition, choral singing was practiced in the Spanish missions in the American Southwest (see
Roman Catholic Church). Although the music in those early settlements was less refined than that of
Mexico City and Lima—centers of the Spanish conquest—it is likely that American Indians of the
Southwest were taught European musical skills and, quite possibly, organized into choirs before the
time at which a musical culture was established in New England.

2. 19th century.
The popularity of the singing-school movement during the first decades of the nineteenth century
fueled a growing enthusiasm for choral singing throughout the Northeast; by 1815 more than 25
singing societies had been established. Christmas night of that year became a watershed for American
choral music when the Handel and Haydn Society gave their premier concert in Boston’s Stone Chapel

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for an estimated 1000 listeners. The evening also marked a major shift in how choral music was
approached and experienced. Rather than assembling as a choir to enhance worship, the singers
gathered specifically to prepare and present a chosen repertoire conducted by a professional musician
in a concert setting. The goal of choral singing now became the edification of the singer and the
listener, with the focus on the composer and the music.

At the same time, a growing dissatisfaction with the musically rough, unsophisticated compositions,
and performance style of the earlier singing masters developed. To improve American music, a group
of musical reformers in the urban centers of the Northeast led by Lowell Mason, Thomas Hastings,
George F. Root, and William B. Bradbury championed music with a more proper, devotional spirit. They
began replacing the music in the tunebooks with compositions almost exclusively European in origin or
style. Composers and compilers chose dignified European texts and tunes set in a “scientifically”
correct manner employing standard harmony, careful voice leading, and accurate rhythmic notation
sung in a more subtle, staid, and sober performing style than that of the 18th century. Mason and his
colleagues also profoundly influenced choral music in the United States through their activities as
teachers, organizers, and conductors. Mason realized he could apply the same singing-school
techniques used earlier for teaching secular music to teaching sacred music. He and others
emphasized vocal training and musical literacy; they soon convinced the Boston school committee to
put music in the public-school curriculum, which gradually raised the performance standards of church
choirs. Mason and English émigré George Webb also founded other choral societies such as the Boston
Academy of Music, which soon outperformed the Handel and Haydn Society in quality, and established
musical conventions and normal institutes (the former short-term events, the latter longer summer
study programs). These conventions and institutes provided American choral conductors, church
musicians, and music educators an opportunity for the first time to study music teaching and learning.
In 1823 New York established the first two important choral societies there, the New York Choral
Society and the New York Sacred Music Society. All of these choral groups legitimized secular music in
a culture that previously valued only sacred choral music. These developments in choral music soon
made it the most ubiquitous type of formal music making in the United States.

The singing-school movement continued to flourish in the rural South and on the western frontier,
where it adopted the shape-note notational system that had been introduced in the Northeast in the
beginning of the 19th century. The repertory, mostly sacred, ranged from the music of Billings and his
contemporaries to camp-meeting spirituals and adaptations of folksongs. Not only was the music
performed by rural congregations and choirs, but people organized regional shapenote conventions or
singings—festive events lasting up to several days. During the years before the Civil War, the original
four-shape notational system was challenged by seven-shape systems (designed to promote solmization
according to contemporary European standards; see Notation). Shape-note singings, directly linked to
the repertory and performance styles of an earlier time, are still held.

From 1800, revivalist activities in the pioneer settlements of the western frontier resulted in open-air
services and social events, known as camp meetings, in which the singing of spirituals was an integral
activity. Spirituals, although not exclusively choral music, contained a combination of secular folktunes
and religious texts, which were used to testify to the joy of religion and to teach the young. Repetition
of text and music was common, since participants had limited musical experience. Blacks and whites
mingled at the meetings (although they had separate religious meetings) and there was a free

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interchange of musical ideas. Black spirituals emerged from congregational unison singing in southern
church congregations and in the fields in the 1870s, when the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University began
touring with choral arrangements of spirituals on their programs.

By the late 19th century gospel music had begun to replace spirituals, especially in urban centers.
Bradbury, a composer of hymns and compiler of collections, was at the forefront of the Sunday-school
movement (1840–75). Gospel hymns held a central place in American religious music during the
revivals led by Dwight L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey from 1875 to 1910, and, later, during the Sunday–
Rodeheaver era (1910–30). By the 1890s, there were published collections of black gospel hymns,
which followed the white hymn tradition. Gospel choirs did not attain importance until the 1930s,
especially among African Americans (see below).

Victorian Americans came to view choral music making as holding considerable power to edify and
uplift. Even modestly talented singers could exercise their civic duty while enjoying the thrill of
participating in something that sounded like great music. The cheaper sheet music prices, the
attractive new romantic music idiom, and the growing urban populations accelerated the growth in
choral groups. These societies also began to be organized and institutionalized in new ways, generally
along community, ethnic, or social lines. The most widespread were ensembles who sang small-scale
works; larger community groups that focused on oratorios, cantatas, and more extensive pieces; and
societies created to promote a single identity. Among the most notable were the Mendelssohn Glee
Club (New York, 1866), the Apollo Club (Boston, 1871), the Apollo Musical Club (Chicago, 1872) and
the Mendelssohn Club (Philadelphia, 1874).

The tradition of amateur glee singing, organized on English models, had appeared in New York and
Boston soon after the American Revolution. Glee clubs (usually all male) became an important part of
college and university choral music making between 1850 and 1900. The earliest club appeared at
Harvard in 1858, followed by others at the University of Michigan (1859) and Yale (1861). As American
choral music embraced the new romantic musical style, the glee merged with the partsong, the generic
name given to these works after mid-century.

The church choir occupied a central place in American musical high culture; by mid-century it had
assumed enormous cultural authority. Changes in the formats of sacred music publication, in the
character and use of church organs, in the state of church choirs, and in the use of so-called quartet
choirs did much to shape this development. Church choir members, who constituted the majority of
choral society singers, transmitted the sacred ideals of moral uplift and social renewal into the secular
ensembles. High culture in turn carried back to the church choir the popularity of secular music,
mostly in the form of opera singing. Before that could happen, the mediocre quality of antebellum
church choirs, which consisted of volunteers led by untrained conductors, had to improve. As churches
grew dissatisfied with how their choirs sounded, those that could afford them began installing organs
and hiring professionals, one singer on each part, to form quartet choirs. From the 1840s on, the
number of congregations using professional singers increased rapidly, influenced by Italian opera and
a desire for a more expressive tone in the service. The increasingly affluent congregations erected
large sanctuaries, installed grand organs, and hired a solo quartet to display their new middle-class
status. By the 1880s churches in other growing urban areas emulated this trend seen in New York, and
by the 1890s many large churches in cities such as Atlanta, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Chicago had
professional quartets. Gradually, as volunteer choir singers improved, many of these churches blended
the paid quartet with the volunteer, chorus choir.

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Toward mid-century, German immigrants affirmed their cultural heritage by forming singing societies,
or Männerchor. Philadelphia established the first one in 1835, followed in quick succession by the
Baltimore Liederkranz (1836) and the Cincinnati Deutscher Gesangverein (1838 or 1839). In New York,
the Deutsche Liederkranz was organized in 1847 and a rival organization, the Männergesangverein
Arion, appeared in 1854. In the large German-American communities, similar convivial musical
societies on European models were organized notably in Milwaukee, Chicago, and Cincinnati.

Germanic singing societies and glee clubs began almost invariably as all-male social organizations, but
often evolved into large choral societies of mixed voices singing art music. The Apollo Musical Club of
Chicago, for example, began with a small group of men in 1872, converted to mixed voices in 1875, and
eventually became a major symphonic choral society of 250 voices. Most large cities established
oratorio societies after mid-century. The New York Oratorio Society, founded in 1873 by Leopold
Damrosch, was the best-known civic chorus. Other large choruses followed the example of the Handel
and Haydn Society in naming themselves after major European composers: a Mendelssohn Society and
a Beethoven Society were founded in Chicago, respectively in 1858 and 1873; a Mozart Society was
founded in 1880 at Fisk University; and the Bethlehem Bach Choir, tracing its ancestry back to the
Moravian collegium musicum of 1744, was founded in 1898 by J. Fred Wolle (1863–1933). Wolle
inaugurated the Bethlehem Bach Festival in 1900. Universities likewise founded choral societies; early
examples include the Oberlin Musical Union of Oberlin (Ohio) College (1860), the University Choral
Union of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1879), and the Madison Choral Union of the
University of Wisconsin (1893).

Like the choral societies, American choral festivals usually followed English and German precedents.
Although the earliest such affairs in Philadelphia (1837) and Baltimore (1840s) were small, the ability
to travel easily and quickly by train directly affected the growth of subsequent festivals. The Cincinnati
May Festival, for example, goes back to a Sängerfest of 1849 in which several male Germanic singing
societies formed a festival chorus of 118 singers. By 1870 nearly 2000 men participated in Cincinnati’s
Männer-gesangverein. The next year Theodore Thomas was hired as music director, plans were made
for the participation of choruses of mixed voices, and in 1873 the first May Festival took place with a
chorus of 800 and an orchestra of over 100. In 1880, a permanent May Festival Chorus of 600 singers
was established. The Handel and Haydn Society sponsored the first American festival for a chorus of
mixed voices in 1856 under the direction of German émigré Carl Zerrahn. Subsequent festivals
involved even more people. The largest festivals held in the United States during the 19th century,
organized in Boston in 1869 and 1872 by Patrick S. Gilmore, surpassed in magnitude even the
notoriously extravagant Handel commemorations presented earlier in the century at the Crystal
Palace, London. Gilmore’s Peace jubilees were gargantuan affairs; in 1869 there were more than
10,000 choristers and 1000 instrumentalists, including 100 firemen dressed in bright red playing
anvils in Verdi’s “Anvil Chorus,” and the 1872 festival had a chorus of 20,000 and an orchestra of 2000.

American choral societies and festival choruses used European repertory almost exclusively, especially
the works of Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn. Some choral organizations
gradually added choral works of American composers such as John Knowles Paine, Dudley Buck,
William W. Gilchrist, and Horatio Parker, all of whom were well-versed in the favored European styles.
By the end of the century, many amateur choral singers could read music and were participating in
choirs and choruses that achieved a standard of performance comparable to that of their European
counterparts.

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3. 20th century.
The formation of music programs in high schools, American colleges, and universities provided the
basis for the greatest change in American choral music since Lowell Mason. These choral ensembles
provided essential ensemble experiences for students majoring in music, and cultural enrichment for
other students. As a result of their institutional affiliations, these ensembles have had sufficient
financial security to free them to explore diverse methods and repertory. Their example and their many
alumni have resulted in the development of choirs and choruses away from the academy. Moreover, by
allowing non-students to participate in their choruses, many colleges and universities have acted as
patrons for community choruses. Two early collegiate choirs, created and nurtured by strong and
idealistic conductors, achieved a standard of excellence that had a major impact on later
developments: the St. Olaf Choir of St. Olaf College (Northfield, Minnesota), which was founded in
1912 and conducted until 1944 by F. Melius Christiansen, and the Westminster Choir (founded in 1921
as the choir of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Dayton, Ohio, but since 1926 affiliated with
Westminster Choir College, and located since 1932 in Princeton, New Jersey where it is now part of
Rider University), which was conducted until 1958 by its founder, John Finley Williamson. Another
important collegiate conductor was Archibald Davison; as director of the all-male Harvard Glee Club
from 1912 to 1933, he transformed a social society that sang a limited selection of college songs into a
polished ensemble for the performance of art music. Of the many excellent recent collegiate choral
ensembles, the St. Olaf choir, the Concordia Choir, and the Westminster Choir have been particularly
outstanding.

Universities have also been responsible for the training of choral conductors. Before the 1960s, this
was generally a supplementary activity for students in other musical disciplines. Graduate programs,
pioneered by such men as Charles Hirt (b 1911) at the University of Southern California and Harold
Decker (b 1914) at the University of Illinois, have spread and now offer intensive training in choral
literature and conducting.

In the early years of the 20th century, the singing of church choirs in the United States had
deteriorated. Many congregations had ceased to maintain a choir and relied instead on a quartet of
professional soloists. During this century American church music has improved remarkably. While
professional singers continue to find employment as church musicians, their activities are usually
integrated into well-conceived choral programs, and in many churches the parishioners themselves
have formed excellent choirs without the aid of professionals. Williamson was among those responsible
for the improved quality of church music in the United States; he realized his vision of a “ministry of
music,” which called for church musicians to function as full-time members of pastoral staffs,
supervising graded choirs in a program of choral development. The work of the Chorister’s Guild
(1949) has considerably improved the music and quality of children’s choirs.

During the 1920s and 1930s Williamson was at the forefront of what has come to be known as the a
cappella choir movement. He and conductors such as Christiansen, Peter Christian Lutkin of
Northwestern University, and Father William J. Finn, conductor of the Paulist Choristers of New York,
led groups that sang a repertory of unaccompanied music (often with emphasis on the recently
rediscovered polyphony of the Renaissance and Baroque periods). More important than the popularity
of these a cappella choirs, however, the movement represented an attitude to performance based on
the self-reliance of singing without accompaniment and the selflessness of achieving a uniformly
blended ensemble. The ultimate goal was the creation of the perfect choral instrument. Conductors

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disseminated their methods to large followings of disciples, and the term “a cappella” came to
represent a call to achieve absolute homogeneity of sound, often with an almost religious zeal. Since
mid-century the movement’s influence has resulted in a more balanced programming of accompanied
and unaccompanied repertory. The a cappella choir movement exercised a strong influence on the
standard of choral performance and contributed to the creation of a wider and more discriminating
public.

Choral music in the public schools benefited greatly not only from the a cappella choir movement but
from the valuable work of the Music Educators National Conference and the American Choral Directors
Association. Both of these groups did much to raise the professional level of choral music making. The
latter (founded in 1959) holds conventions and publishes a monthly journal; by the second decade of
the 21st century it had more than 18,000 members. Young singers possessed clear and light voices,
enthusiasm for an idealistic cause, and a willingness to participate in group activity. American
educational administrators recognized that conspicuously excellent choral ensembles were of value not
only culturally, but also in terms of community relations, and sought out trained music educators to
create first-rate ensembles. Strong state organizations promoted excellence in choral singing by
sponsoring contests, festivals, and honor choruses at regional and state levels. The honor choruses and
festivals also promoted and disseminated better choral repertory.

In the 1930s African American musicians organized church choirs to draw on the repertory and
performance style of gospel music. Thomas A. Dorsey formed the National Convention of Gospel Choirs
and Choruses in 1932; the Cleveland-based choir Wings Over Jordan became nationally known through
radio broadcasts from 1938. Gospel choirs in churches such as the Ebenezer Baptist Church (Chicago),
Church of God in Christ (Memphis), Greater Harvest Baptist Church (Chicago), Washington Temple
Church of God in Christ (Brooklyn), and Prayer Tabernacle Baptist Church (Detroit) emphasized a full
four-part mixed chorus style until the 1960s, when James Cleveland and his Angelic Choir (First Baptist
Church of Nutley, New Jersey) developed a style of solo singer with choral accompaniment that was
widely admired. In the late 1960s gospel choirs appeared in colleges and universities, first at those
with large black enrollments (Howard University, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University) and
then at schools with predominately white enrollments (Macalester College, Mount Holyoke College,
Harvard University). Other prominent black conductors have been Andre Thomas, Anton Armstrong,
and Moses Hogan.

Large symphonic and oratorio choruses continue to prosper in the 21st century; most major
metropolitan centers have at least one chorus with more than 200 singers. However, the trend has
been in the direction of smaller choruses, often called chorales, comprised of expert singers who are
rigorously auditioned and selected. This was foreshadowed in 1893, when Frank Damrosch organized
the Musical Art Society of New York, an ensemble advertised as a chorus of 70 professional singers.
The a cappella choir movement and the quality of certain collegiate choruses influenced this
development, but there have been other contributing factors. Musicological studies of previously
neglected areas of choral literature and performance practice prompted a concern for authenticity,
which has mandated smaller performance forces for certain kinds of repertory. The existence of a large
pool of well-trained American choral singers provides personnel of a high caliber. Alongside the
proliferation of small choruses has been the creation of specialized professional-quality ensembles
such the Philadelphia Singers, the Western Wind, and Seraphic Fire. These groups perform a wide
repertoire in stylistically appropriate performances from early music through avant-garde works as
well as American and World Music.

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Mormon Tabernacle Choir, 2009

Reuters/George Frey/Landov

The establishment of professional choral ensembles has had a profound impact on American choral
music. Among the first professional groups in the United States were two choirs of African American
singers: the Eva Jessye Choir (active 1927–77) and the Hall Johnson Choir, which was established in
1930 and later became known as the Festival Negro Chorus of Los Angeles. Fred Waring’s
Pennsylvanians was a vocal-instrumental group formed in 1916 that continued until Waring’s death in
1984. Waring capitalized on the national popularity of his professional touring ensemble to create a
highly successful business organization, Shawnee Press, which sold large quantities of popular choral
arrangements and held summer conducting workshops. Among Waring’s protégés was Robert Shaw,
who was widely regarded as the foremost choral conductor of his generation in the United States. In
1941 he founded the Collegiate Chorale, an amateur chorus of 120–200 voices, which he led until 1954,
and he was the founder and conductor of the Robert Shaw Chorale (1948–66), a 40-voice professional
ensemble with which he toured internationally and made many recordings. As conductor of the
Cleveland Orchestra Chorus (1956–67) and the Atlanta SO and Chorus (from 1967) he brought
distinction to the chorus as well as the symphony. Others who have formed their own professional
groups are Roger Wagner and Gregg Smith. In 1978 Louis Botto started the excellent all-male choral
ensemble Chanticleer and in 1991 Craig Johnson began Conspirare, which has garnered international
praise. Other first-rank choruses continue to thrive, including the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and the Turtle Creek Chorale in Dallas. More recent notable choral
conductors include Phillip Brunelle, Joseph Flummerfelt, Dale Warland, and Ann Howard Jones.

A number of large choruses affiliated with symphony orchestras operate primarily on a professional
basis. The first important one was the Chicago Symphony Chorus, founded in 1957 by Margaret Hillis,
which has more than 200 members. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus under Robert Shaw

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achieved worldwide renown as well. Other orchestras of Boston, Cleveland, St. Louis, and San
Francisco also sponsor professional choruses. But in contrast to the many American orchestras that
provide full-time employment for instrumental musicians, there is only one chorus in the United States
in a comparable position, the Metropolitan Opera Chorus, which performs an operatic rather than a
specifically choral repertory. Still, choral singing has become increasingly professional in recent years.
Chorus America (founded 1977 as the Association of Professional Vocal Ensembles) currently has a
membership of more than 650 ensembles.

Professional-quality choruses have set a standard, through performances, tours, and recordings, to
which non-professional singers may aspire. More than ever before, choruses of all types perform a
balanced repertory that includes not only European works of the past and present but also many works
by American composers. This increased interest in American music is due in part to a growing sense of
self-sufficiency, which has freed choral musicians from their former reliance on a European
imprimatur; it has also resulted from the emergence of composers who have created a repertory of
considerable breadth and substance.

II. Repertory.

The Puritan settlers who colonized New England in the 17th century brought with them a musical
tradition rooted in Calvinist practice (see Psalms, metrical). For almost a century and a half, English
psalters such as those of Henry Ainsworth (Amsterdam, 1612), Thomas Ravenscroft (London, 1621),
and Sternhold and Hopkins (London, 1562) served as the principal source of music in New England
churches. The first book published in British North America was a psalter, the Bay Psalm Book of 1640;
it was created to improve the translations of the psalms, not to change the tunes to which they were
sung. The emergence in the early 1700s of the New England singing-schools was directed at the
proper singing of the existing tune repertory, as were the first musical textbooks by John Tufts and
Thomas Walter (both published in 1721). By the end of the 18th century, however, the singing-school
movement had produced such activity that it stimulated a large and unique body of choral music by
Americans themselves, beginning with The New-England Psalm-singer (1770) by William Billings;
tunebooks by Andrew Law, Supply Belcher, Jacob French, Daniel Read, Timothy Swan, Jacob Kimball,
Samuel Holyoke, and Oliver Holden soon followed (see New England Composers, Schools of). Billings’s
The Singing Master’s Assistant (1778) was the first American tune book printed for the use of choirs; it
contained eight anthems. In published tunebooks, these composers created numerous choral
compositions in four principal genres: plain tunes (homorhythmic settings of metrical psalms and
hymns), fuging-tunes (sections of contrapuntal vocal entries with text overlap), anthems (through-
composed settings of prose texts, usually scriptural), and set-pieces (through-composed settings of
numerous verses). Of these, the anthems were the most ambitious musically. Four-part unaccompanied
writing (treble, counter, tenor, and bass) was the norm, with the tenor carrying the main melody
(“air”). Other stylistic characteristics included omission of the third degree of triads (particularly at
cadences), consonances on strong beats, infrequent modulations, and modally inflected melody and
harmony. Texts were predominantly sacred, although there were also secular texts reflecting patriotic
themes (Billings’s plain tune “Chester” and his anthem Lamentation over Boston) or the didactic and
social aspects of the singing-schools (Billings’s Modern Musick and Down Steers the Bass, the latter

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also set by Read). Temperley (1979) has shown certain similarities between American tunebooks and
contemporaneous publications of English musicians who provided music for use in parish churches and
in the meeting houses of dissenting sects.

Outside New England, an impressive choral repertory emanated from the several American Moravian
communities established in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Salem (now Winston-Salem), North Carolina,
in the mid-18th century. Sophisticated choral works—chiefly anthems for mixed chorus, string
orchestra, and organ—were written by both European- and American-born composers and performed
by well-trained choristers and instrumentalists. German in background, composers such as Johannes
Herbst, John Antes, Johann Friedrich Peter, and David Moritz Michael followed closely the procedures
of European Classical style. Peter’s festive Christmas anthem Singet ihr Himmel is typical in its
opening orchestral ritornello, contrasting thematic material, homophonic texture, and tonic–dominant
tonal polarity. The Moravian tradition extended well into the 19th century, though it exercised little
direct influence on American musical life outside Moravian communities. Later composers include
Peter Wolle, Francis Hagen, and Edward Leinbach, whose anthem Hosanna has been widely
performed.

Around 1800, the shape-note tradition in the Northeast began flourishing in the South. Shape-note
tunebooks preserved much of the 18th-century singing-school repertory while adding to it adaptations
and arrangements of religious folk music, camp-meeting spirituals and revival songs, and new
compositions. Tunebooks such as Ananias Davisson’s Kentucky Harmony (1816), The Southern
Harmony and Musical Companion (1835) of William Walker, and The Sacred Harp (1844) compiled by
Benjamin Franklin White and E.J. King were thus the first notated examples of folk music that had
previously existed only in the oral tradition. Of particular importance to the history of the white
spiritual in the early 19th century were collections by Joshua Smith (Divine Hymns, 1794), Jeremiah
Ingalls (The Christian Harmony, 1805), and John Wyeth (Repository of Sacred Music. Part Second,
1813). A compromise between the music of the camp-meeting spiritual and the more formal hymn style
of Mason and Hastings was achieved in Joshua Leavitt’s The Christian Lyre of 1830, a precursor to the
later collections of gospel hymns by William B. Bradbury, P.P. Bliss, W. Henry Sherwood, Charles Albert
Tindley, and others.

In the East, the New England singing-school movement, which had been born out of reform 100 years
earlier, was itself subjected to reform. The popular new European styles supplanted the rough-hewn
music of Billings and his contemporaries. Signs of reform were already apparent in the later
compositions of Law and others, but it was men like Thomas Hastings, William B. Bradbury, and,
especially, Lowell Mason who effectively brought the singing-school movement to a close in the
Northeast.

As the number of choral societies and church choirs increased dramatically, publishers flooded the
market with thousands of inexpensive tunebooks to meet the growing demand. These collections
consisted mostly of adaptations of European compositions, including opera and oratorio arias,
folksongs, religious works, anthems, and metric psalm tunes. Some of the popular tunebooks were
Mason’s The Boston Anthem Book (Boston and New York, 1839) and Carmina Sacra (Boston and New
York, 1841) and William Bradbury’s The Psalmodist (with Thomas Hastings, 1844). The widespread
popularity of the recently invented reed organ in households, schools, and churches meant that
amateur musicians could now accompany the vocal music. Although the tunebooks usually included no
accompaniments (to save printing costs,) the directions they include and their score format make it

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clear the music was intended for keyboard support. The soprano part, which had been in the top line,
was moved to the line above the bass line, which had figures underneath for harmonizing the chords;
the top line was now the tenor part and underneath it was the alto, giving a TASB scoring.

The large choral groups such as the Handel and Haydn Society and the New York Choral Society
presented long, mixed programs of vocal solos, small vocal ensembles, and choruses consisting of
short-to-medium length sacred works: hymns, psalms, and anthems by Mason, Shaw, and others, and
including excerpts (and more rarely complete performances) from the well-known oratorios by Handel,
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, including The Creation, Messiah, Christ on the Mount of Olives, and
others. By mid-century extended works by Mendelssohn, Neukomm, and Spohr joined the repertory,
including St. Paul, Elijah¸ The Last Judgement, David, and American John Hill Hewitt’s Jephtha’s Rash
Vow.

Improved music teaching and learning in the United States, combined with the availability of training
in Germany, accelerated the professionalization of choral music making. The larger ensembles were
now able to present major contemporary European works, such as Liszt’s Christus, Bach’s St. Matthew
Passion, Berlioz’s Grande Messe des morts, and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. These groups also
began including American compositions in their programs. John Knowles Paine, although primarily an
instrumental composer, produced several notable large-scale choral works, including a Mass in D
(1865) and the oratorio St. Peter (1870–72). The Mass, which divides the Latin text into 18 large
movements, owes much to Viennese Classicism and especially to Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. Dudley
Buck and Horatio Parker, whose music shows a certain affinity with the “new German school” of Liszt
and Wagner, are conspicuous among their contemporaries for specializing in choral music, and each
wrote cantatas and oratorios as well as anthems and other short works. Parker’s oratorio Hora
novissima (1893), an 11-movement setting of medieval Latin religious poetry, reveals a sure—and
thoroughly European—mastery of musical structure and the manipulation of choral and orchestral
forces. (It was presented as the year’s novelty at the 1899 Three Choirs Festival in England.) Many
composers wrote dramatic secular cantatas that were popular in the United States during the last
decades of the 19th century: Buck’s Scenes from The Golden Legend (1879), Chadwick’s The Viking’s
Last Voyage (1881), Paine’s The Nativity (1883), Foote’s The Wreck of the Hesperus (1887–8),
Gilchrist’s The Legend of Bended Bow (1888), Parker’s Dream-King and his Love (1891), and Gleason’s
The Culprit Fay, were among the best known.

The most popular small genre was the Partsong, which was typically a piece for two or more voices
without independent accompaniment. The genre grew out of the German Männerchor and English glee
traditions and attracted many contemporary composers, including Buck, Amy Beach, Chadwick, Foote,
Gilchrist, Margaret Ruthven Lang, Edward MacDowell, Paine, and Parker. Popular sentimental,
patriotic, and minstrel songs of the 19th century were arranged as partsongs as well. To these would
often be added a refrain “chorus” at the end for the vocal ensemble to sing. Occasionally, Stephen
Foster, George F. Root, Henry Clay Work, and others wrote out their song refrains in parts: Foster’s
Come Where my Love Lies Dreaming (1855) and Work’s Crossing the Grand Sierras (1869) are set in
parts throughout.

Church choir music benefited from these developments as well. Moreover, the improvements in
printing technology, especially the invention of the steam press in 1810 and the rotary printing press in
1843, considerably reduced the price of the octavo choral anthem introduced by Novello in London.
Now each choir member could have his or her copy of the music for each Sunday. In the late 1860s,

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Dudley Buck was the first American composer to transplant the romantic musical style from England to
this country in his anthems. He also championed the adaptation of the English practice of printing
music in piano score, with modern SATB voicing and the accompaniment underneath. His two most
popular anthems, Rock of Ages and the iconic Festival Te Deum, remained popular well into the 20th
century. Buck’s student, Harry Rowe Shelley, continued Buck’s popular, mellifluous style to great
success. By the end of the century, Horatio Parker became the most important anthem composer, as
exemplified in his stirring The Lord is My Light.

In the second half of the century, African American folk music (especially the spiritual) found a
welcome reception with audiences. The establishment of choral organizations at Fisk University,
Hampton Institute, and other black colleges initiated concert performances of black religious folksong,
and this soon led to published collections of arranged spirituals such as Theodore Seward’s Jubilee
Songs: as Sung by the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University (1872 and 1884) and Thomas Fenner’s Cabin
and Plantation Songs as Sung by the Hampton Students (1874). Even though a precise rhythmic,
melodic, and harmonic notation obscured elements of the folk style, these and similar collections
brought to light an important body of American music, and the spiritual has assumed a solid position in
the 20th-century choral concert repertory. African American composers, among them Harry T.
Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Grant Still, and William Dawson have not only arranged spirituals
but have appropriated their style for use in original compositions (such as Dett’s oratorio The Ordering
of Moses, 1937).

The music of Charles Ives synthesizes various musical traditions of the 19th century and at the same
time foreshadows 20th-century developments. Ives’s The Celestial Country (1898–1902) has much in
common with the Romantic cantatas of Parker and Buck, while several early psalm settings prefigure
more modern compositional techniques, such as the use of bitonality in Psalm lxvii (?1894). The
quotation of familiar melodies, a typically Ivesian device, occurs in Lincoln the Great Commoner
(1912), where scraps of patriotic tunes emerge spasmodically from dense textural surroundings, and in
the first movement of the monumental Symphony no.4 for chorus and orchestra (1909–16), in which
Lowell Mason’s hymn Watchman, Tell us of the Night is superimposed on a contrasting orchestral
background. Perhaps most significant among Ives’s more than 40 extant choral works are the three
Harvest Home Chorales (c1902, c1912–15) and the massive setting of Psalm xc (1923–4).

The eminence of American composers in the 20th century, along with the high standards of
performance attained by many high school, collegiate, community, church, and professional ensembles,
has resulted in an extensive modern repertory. Large compositions with orchestra remain common, but
smaller works, often grouped into cycles or suites and demanding more than modest performing
ability, have attracted increasing attention.

Among those composers who have perpetuated the 19th-century Romantic styles, Howard Hanson, Leo
Sowerby, and Randall Thompson have written effectively for chorus. Thompson’s works in particular,
ranging from the short a cappella Alleluia (1940) to longer cycles such as The Peaceable Kingdom
(1936), The Last Words of David, and Frostiana (1959), have taken firm root in the repertory. Also
conservative in approach are the works of Paul Creston, Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Ned
Rorem. Menotti’s The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore (1956) points to the renewed interest in
the Renaissance madrigal that is shared by a number of American composers.

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Conspicuous use of materials borrowed from vernacular styles of this and past centuries is to be found
in the choral works of Still, Virgil Thomson, Henry Cowell, Roy Harris, Aaron Copland, Ross Lee
Finney, William Schuman, and Leonard Bernstein, although not as an exclusive stylistic characteristic.
Schuman, especially, has written much choral music in a wide diversity of styles, from the international
style of the unaccompanied Carols of Death (1958) to the Americanisms of the cantata Casey at the Bat
(1976).

Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bloch, and Hindemith (all of whom settled in the United States) have
influenced successive generations of American composers, including Roger Sessions and Elliott Carter
as well as more prolific choral composers such as Louise Talma, Irving Fine, Vincent Persichetti, and
Daniel Pinkham. Talma’s Let’s Touch the Sky (1952), a three-piece cycle with flute, oboe, and bassoon,
is neoclassical in style, while her unaccompanied La corona (1955) applies serial principles. Fine’s
suites The Choral New Yorker (1944) and The Hour Glass (1949) and Pinkham’s cantatas and other
church compositions are accessible and ingratiating. The choral compositions of Norman Dello Joio,
Persichetti, and Alan Hovhaness have been influenced tangentially by international styles.

Before the mid-1950s experimentation in non-traditional sound resources and application of new
principles of musical construction lay chiefly in the domain of instrumental (and electro-acoustic)
music. A number of choral composers, often aided by the use of graphic notation, explored various
avant-garde techniques. Particularly important has been the exploitation of both voiced and unvoiced
sound effects such as pitch approximation, choral glissandos, speaking, shouting, hissing, breath
sounds, tongue clicks, and other coloristic devices suggested by the sound potential of language itself.
Salvatore Martirano’s O. O. O. O, that Shakespeherian Rag (1958) is an almost lexicographical
exposition of new devices. Prominent among American composers who have employed avant-garde
techniques in various combinations are Earle Brown, Kenneth Gaburo, Richard Felciano, Roger
Reynolds, and Olly Wilson. As a result of their work, techniques including spatially separated and
changing sound sources, indeterminacy, and the integration of live and electronically produced sound
components have found expression in American choral music.

By the last decades of the 20th century a diverse group of new composers came of age, including
Morten Lauridsen, Judith Zaimont, David Conte, Libby Larsen, Robert Kyr, and Eric Whitacre. They
adopted a decisively more accessible style by using enriched tonal structures, warmly expressive
melodies, active counterpoint, and less complicated rhythms. Whitacre and Lauridsen remain the most
popular. Whitacre synthesized various late twentieth-century techniques with a more traditional
approach, while Lauridsen created a transcendent mysticism with his shimmering, serene, and fluid
writing.

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